3 research outputs found
Pairwise similarity of TopSig document signatures
This paper analyses the pairwise distances of signatures produced by the TopSig retrieval model on two document collections. The distribution of the distances are compared to purely random signatures. It explains why TopSig is only competitive with state of the art retrieval models at early precision. Only the local neighbourhood of the signatures is interpretable. We suggest this is a common property of vector space models
TopSig: Topology Preserving Document Signatures
Performance comparisons between File Signatures and Inverted Files for text
retrieval have previously shown several significant shortcomings of file
signatures relative to inverted files. The inverted file approach underpins
most state-of-the-art search engine algorithms, such as Language and
Probabilistic models. It has been widely accepted that traditional file
signatures are inferior alternatives to inverted files. This paper describes
TopSig, a new approach to the construction of file signatures. Many advances in
semantic hashing and dimensionality reduction have been made in recent times,
but these were not so far linked to general purpose, signature file based,
search engines. This paper introduces a different signature file approach that
builds upon and extends these recent advances. We are able to demonstrate
significant improvements in the performance of signature file based indexing
and retrieval, performance that is comparable to that of state of the art
inverted file based systems, including Language models and BM25. These findings
suggest that file signatures offer a viable alternative to inverted files in
suitable settings and from the theoretical perspective it positions the file
signatures model in the class of Vector Space retrieval models.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, CIKM 201
Fast and effective focused retrieval
Building an efficient and an effective search engine is a very challenging task. In this paper, we present the efficiency and effectiveness of our search engine at the INEX 2009 Efficiency and Ad Hoc Tracks. We have developed a simple and effective pruning method for fast query evaluation, and used a two-step process for Ad Hoc retrieval. The overall results from both tracks show that our search engine performs very competitively in terms of both efficiency and effectiveness